


Stories Left Behind

by Sachi_Grace



Series: Starlit Love [4]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Blood, F/M, Momoharu Week, Stars, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24044977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sachi_Grace/pseuds/Sachi_Grace
Summary: The Luminary of the Stars, final bow he took, and the sidekick he left behind.
Relationships: Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito
Series: Starlit Love [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731013
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. Bloodied Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Momoharu Week for hosting this event. This is a two-part series and I hope you guys enjoy. Be warned, a lot of angst. I do apologize for that. 
> 
> Thank you for your subscriptions, comments, hits, and kudos. They all mean a lot to me. Your support matters.

Kaito was familiar with death. He didn’t want to admit that to anyone, especially not Shuichi and Maki, but...he was familiar with it. Death to him was a constant companion, always watching in the background, but it was easy to guess when he was going to show up again. Sometimes, it was at a car accident taking away his mother’s and father’s lives, and sometimes it was a hand on his shoulder as his body racked with coughs and blood gushed from his lungs to his hand. Blood that he knew would scare his two closest and cherished friends if they knew what he was going through. 

Shuichi had lost enough, so Kaito was bound and determined to stay silent for his sake mostly. Besides, he was the Luminary of the Stars, he could face down death by his lonesome if he needed to. Maki...Maki had seen enough blood in her lifetime, and this wasn’t something he was willing to impart on her. This wasn’t something that he wanted her to see. Blood was...always on her hands, and Death weighed down her shoulders until she was small and delicate. Not that he’d ever said that to her face, she was strong...Kaito just wished that she didn’t have to  _ be  _ that strong. To see that much Death, to feel that much blood.

When he first knew that he got sick, he was angry. Livid. He was throwing things in his room, grateful for the soundproofing because no one dared to show up if they heard. He bloodied his knuckles and his lungs bloodied his lips when he finally overextended himself and couldn’t keep up with his anger. He had wanted to do  _ so  _ much. Kaito wasn’t naive, he knew that him surviving the killing game was going to be a shot in the dark. Of course no one would want to go up against a man like him, but...he wouldn’t past Korekiyo for thinking that he could be an easy target, or Kokichi for thinking that his easy prey for pranks could be an easy prey for something much worse. 

Killing games made people more suspicious than they should be. Kokichi outing Maki as an assassin should’ve alienated her to everyone, but Kaito couldn’t let that be the case. He couldn’t let it slide. He dragged her, kicking and screaming, to try to be friends with Shuichi because god knew that he wouldn’t be around for that. He wouldn’t be around to protect his sidekick and sidekicks needed to stick together. 

Anger turned into denial. For a while there, it was just a once in a while cough. A cough that disappeared until he did something like tried to exercise more than he should, or chase Kokichi around the school again for him doing something stupid. At first, Kaito was certain that he wasn’t given a death sentence, it was just a minor inconvenience. That was easier to handle. That was...that was easier to hide. Just get out of the killing game, go to the doctor, everything would be fine. His two sidekicks never needed to know.

He felt like Maki had her suspicions though. There were times where he swore that she would get done early, just to face him for a second before leaving. Cold as ice, and not warming up. Kaito knew that people like Maki took time. He was tossing her into an ocean and forcing her to swim. He could be patient with her and toss her a lifeboat of letting her go when she was done. He did try to coax her to stay every once in a while, an offer for a chat, an offer for  _ something _ . Maki didn’t usually take these offers.

So he pleaded, much like he pleaded with death and the sickness as things started to turn for the worst. As more blood was easy to cough up than not. When he was starting to feel weaker and weaker and trying to keep up with anything was a chore. His body ached, his chest burned with the lack of oxygen and pooling with too much blood. His stomach twisted into knots and lumps, it was hard to even have an appetite when everything tasted like metal and copper.

He pleaded with her to try. To try to sit. To try and talk. Whether it was the blood that she still felt on her hands or in her nightmares. Whether she wanted to talk about some pleasant memory or a fear that she held deep in the corners of her mind, he was willing to listen. Slowly, just like a flower that was finally ready for spring, she was starting to blossom. Shuichi was receptive to it as well, and soon...Kaito had two full-fledged sidekicks who were starting to become close.

Unlikely friends. Kaito was good at making those. He wished he could have dragged Ryoma. He wished he could drag Kokichi. He wished that Himiko wasn’t so lazy, or that Tsumugi didn’t talk about cosplay so much. He wished that he could extend his hand to any of these people, but...Ryoma was gone and dead. Kokichi was….Kokichi wasn’t a friend but Katio couldn’t exactly call him a foe either. That was too easy and it felt way too simple. Tsumugi was just...hard to reach and Himiko...well...Tenko had been the better fit. Even when Korekiyo decided that the better fit was...better left dead.

Kaito couldn’t exactly tell when he decided to accept his fate. When he got poisoned with the arrow and was indebted to Kokichi for saving his life, or when Maki was trying to do everything that she could to try to save him, even when he knew it was fruitless. He kind of wondered what would’ve happened if he had just told Kokichi that saving a dead man from dying was...a little stupid in so many ways. He wondered if that’s why Kokichi picked him to begin with. 

Maybe it was before all then, when Maki once woke him up during the night and they had a late night stroll with no one around. Maki had flourished her petals and she spoke about all of the blood that she shed. Every victim. Every life. She spoke about her childhood friend and the car accident that took her life. Kaito, in turn, spoke of the blood Death took. His parents are inside of a wrecked car and he was too small to remember a thing besides always living at his grandparent’s house. He spoke of how he grew up to believe that the stars were souls in the sky and that his parents were stars, and that if he became an astronaut maybe...just maybe he’d be able to see them again.

He never told Shuichi this story. He made something up, too afraid to let his wounds show. Too scared to be too open. Being open with Shuichi was a ticking time bomb, especially when Death was in his shadow. He couldn’t bear to impart those kinds of words on his friend, and have Shuichi watch him die. At the same time, it was cruel of him to do the same to Maki, who had stared Death and become Death for other people. Who knew the cold touch more intimately than he ever would. 

Now...now he was inside a spaceship that he wasn’t going to survive in. A complete, and total mockery of what the Luminary of the Stars was about. Blood gurgled in his chest and he coughed violently, splatting the window, his hand and feeling it drip down his chin to his shirt. He remembered Maki’s tearful goodbye, and her fearful expression at seeing blood. 

For all of her acceptance of “it is what it is”, she had been fervently in denial of this death. Kaito was pleased that he meant so much to her, but he hoped that his death didn’t end her own way of living.

He hoped that she really, truly did begin to learn to love herself. That made him smile. Maki the strong. Maki the resilient. The mastermind of this killing game didn’t know what they got themselves into, didn’t they?


	2. Cosmic Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Kaito thought she wasn't paying attention, he was wrong.

_ “Did you know, MakiRoll, that the milky way is actually a galaxy?” Kaito asked as he looked up at the falsified stars above them. Maki made a soft hum of noncommitment. She knew right then and there that Kaito was going to go on and on about the space that he adored so much. Even if she did know, Maki thought it was best to stay silent. She wondered what kind of story he’d come up with this time. “It’s a barred spiral galaxy. The sun rotates around it in the middle. Our solar system is in the Orion arm. There’s four of those. Two major ones and two minor ones.” _

_ “What does that have to do with anything?” Maki asked, her arms behind her head. _

_ Kaito didn’t seem phased by her question. Maybe he was too caught up in whatever thoughts he had about space. Maki wasn’t ever sure. Sometimes, Kaito was too far for her to reach and understand. Even Shuichi sometimes couldn’t figure out the astronaut, even if they were close enough to be brothers. “Because MakiRoll, there’s other solar systems we haven’t even tried to touch yet.” _

Now that he wasn’t there with her, it was the story that she clung to as she looked up at the very real stars that twinkled before her. When they had managed to break free from Danganronpa’s grasp, Maki had decided that the memories with her friends had been too much. She was better off alone, and to lick her wounds in private. To get rid of the nightmares on her own terms.    
  


She had found a space in the middle of the countryside, far away from the city and it’s light pollution. The town was small and narrow-minded, but they mostly minded their own business. They certainly didn’t seem to care that every night Maki would climb up to the roof of the small apartment that she was renting from the  _ Danganronpa  _ lawsuit. It had been a nightmare to fight through, but Shuichi was good at his Ultimate and because he was so good, had the ability to network while Himiko and herself hung uselessly to the side. 

The Milky Way shone brightly in a band of bright stars, glittering over her, mocking her. Kaito would’ve been able to travel through that. See the 500 solar systems that were in the galaxy. Maybe they would have known with the Ultimate Astronaut on their side whether or not aliens were real. Maybe they would’ve known what other space colonies could exist and what they should expect from them. Maybe they would have discovered so much about the Milky Way’s galaxy that they could have traveled to Andromeda, to the other galaxies far and vast between.

Maki read all about different galaxies and solar systems. Just to have something. Of course, while researching, she had come across that the solar system and stars had stories behind them. The coyote that stole the bread from a village, chased up to the stars; leaving crumbs in its wake. The rabbit princess who sat on the moon, observing earth from down below. The zodiacs and their stories. The myths and their stories. She didn’t doubt that Kaito knew every single one of them. 

She didn’t doubt that Kaito, who loved the stars so much, didn’t just take all those facts and considered them to be truths. He probably could tell her more than just the stories she found. 

Kaito could’ve had a star named after him. The Luminary of the Stars, would’ve been a fitting title for him then. Maki reached and traced a line through the sky, finding a constellation that he once told her about. She could imagine him sitting there next to her. She could imagine the purple coat hanging uselessly over his shoulders, the grin that never seemed to die on his face. She could imagine his voice, right there. “There you go Maki Roll. I knew you were paying attention.”

“As if I couldn’t.” Maki scoffed to herself, finding it foolish to speak to a ghost. “You were loud enough about it.”

A causal laugh. A sheepish rub of the neck. She could envision all of it. But the astronaut wasn’t there and talking to his ghost wasn’t going to help her. “What galaxy are you in now?” She asked.

The ghost conveniently disappeared, as all ghosts did when the hard questions were asked. At the same time, Maki seemed to understand a little of what Kaito was trying to tell her. He wasn’t in this galaxy anymore, but within the 500 solar systems and the other galaxies the endless vastness of space held...he was somewhere there.

It would take a lifetime for her to meet him again.


End file.
